Pilling v. Otis’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 district · 4 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 8 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““We think the charge is also liable to the objection that it confounds the distinction between mere intent to hinder and delay creditors and the intent to defraud them. The statute clearly recognizes this distinction. It makes void all conveyances made ‘with intent to hinder, delay or defraud’ creditors. This language implies that the intent to defraud is something distinct from the mere intent to ‘delay.’ And whoever has been familiar with trials involving the question of fraud in sales has doubtless often noticed the necessity of this distinction. It is frequently the ease that debtors, with an honest intention to pay their creditors in the end, make some shift or transfer merely to gain time. Amd it is usual in such cases for counsel to .lay great stress upon the facts indicating the intent to pay at last, as disproving fraud. It is natural for the minds of jurors as well as others to give them that effect. For the term ‘fraud,’ as ordinarily understood, imports something of a more vicious character than the mere production of a delay of judgment. If a court, therefore, should tell a jury that it required ‘an intent to hinder, delay and defraud creditors,’ in order to avoid a sale, they might very naturally find the sale good, though satisfied of the intent to delay, upon the ground that the debtor also intended to use the time gained by providing for full payment in the end. The charge in this case was given in the form stated, and for that reason we think it liable to th”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In re Platts